I don't remember the world proclaiming Apple's death when the 3GS was announced, this strategy is NO DIFFERENT than Intel's Tick-Tock plan.
As for the Andoid market catching up...I'll report back when I don't have to pull the battery on my wife's droid every 24 hours.

It all began with an iPhone...
March was when my son celebrated his 15th birthday, and I got him an iPhone.
He just loved it. Who wouldn't?
I celebrated my birthday in July, and my wife made me very happy when she bought me an iPad.
My daughter's birthday was in August so I got her an iPod Touch.
My wife celebrated her birthday in September so I got her an iRon.
It was around then that the fight started...
What my wife failed to recognize is that the iRon can be integrated into the home network with the iWash, iCook and iClean.
This inevitably activates the iNag reminder service.
I should be out of the hospital by Monday.

There simply are not 4G LTE networks that are widespread in the USA. Maybe by this time next year.
The 4S does have advantages as it is a world phone; this is attractive to business people and heavy vacation travelers.
The voice recognition, Siri, may be useful but certainly not a super development.
Overlooked is the free 3G phone which will get new people introduced into the Apple ecosystem and spur or maintain future growth rates.

Yep! I was a little disappointed when knowing that iPhone 5 will be delayed further and what we can get is iPhone 4S. I'm still hoping to see when Apple comes up with a better idea to make your phone to be the terminal of a large computation power - cloud. It may be even worse if the 5 is just a change on cosmetic but nothing great in terms of new technology. I'm still waiting to see what Apple will do in the coming year.

Agree, market share is not Apple's worry. In fact, Apple is a fashion, company, part of its appeal is low market share. The real problem with Apple is that it is too closely tied to Steve Job's charisma, without him, everything Apple does will be viewed as inadequate.

I will add that while the iPhone 4s is an incremental move consistent with Apple's strategic choice for bringing out new "i" products, I would not poo-poo one aspect of 4s that is being underplayed. The Siri speech recognition system is a large step forward for obtaining navigational directions via speech, the ultimate communications medium. Kudos to this Apple technology, probably obtained from third party. Let's hope the consumer likes what he/she hears.

I wouldn't call this a mature market in any sense. It has hit a plateau. But that's more a function of letting processor and accessory performance catch up. The current generation, even with dual core, is an incremental jump from the prior. As soon as the innards take another big leap, as they did shortly before iPhone I, then we'll leave the plateau and see a fast growing market again.
Current smart phones and tablets are almost powerful enough to be a desktop applications platform. I've run a word processor and spreadsheet off of Angstrom on an ARM-based Beagleboard. It's close enough to useable to see future viability.
Whether it be a next gen Arm, Atom or something else, when you can slap wireless mouse, keyboard and full-size display connectivity into a smart phone, the world changes again.
While smart phones are quite popular, there is set that still considers them to big, expensive or silly for the capabilities. How will that set feel when you can sit at your desk (home, office or Starbucks) and have your desktop computer in your pocket, just using the wireless peripherals? (Yes, there will be security issues, but you have to assume that they will be solved about as well as they are today).
"The Cloud" gets rep[laced or augmented by "The Pocket." Your full-power computing needs go with you wherever you go. No need to decide between laptop or desktop. All you computing capability, high-performance applications excepted, is in the phone in your pocket.

I think that Apple is safe to hold back the iPhone 5 for 6-9 months. 4G LTE networks continue to build out while for chipsets, there are power management issues to be addressed.
From a personal angle, the iPhone 5 may appear at T-Mobile if the AT&T acquisition is stopped, taking advantage of its HPSA+ network.